At my lunch break yesterday, I was looking on my phone for something to watch and found the TV show “Unsealed: Conspiracy Files.” I enjoyed flipping around the various episodes on Netflix. I wanted to share three things that I learned:

The Invasion of Iraq was to protect a Star Gate that permitted the ancients to travel the stars.

The “Moon Landing Hoax” theory was started by a book called We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle by Bill Kaysing and Randy Reid. Kaysing has published some other interesting books, such as Eat Well for 99 Cent a Meal. Sounds like a fellow traveller.

Dennis Kucinich attempted to outlaw chemtrails, but the bill mysteriously vanished. Some more skeptical folks say that the bill was written by UFO enthusiasts and Kucinich didn’t even read it. Here is the bill. This is kind of a shame. I feel that Kucinich has some common sense approaches to the problems we all face, but on top of being painted as a loony liberal, he’s now cast a UFO/chemtrail nut. The conpsiracy theorist inside me, the one speaking to me through top secret government technology from an underwater base reachable by clandestine intercontinental mag lev rail, says that Kucinich may be the victim of a conspiracy to show all anti-war politicians are easily discreditable.

When watching a sitcom like Charles in Charge or Who’s The Boss, I often get an eerie chill down my spine. What bothers me is the houses. The clean, never changing houses. There’s something about them that says, “This is all there is to the universe. This house is all. You shall not pass.” I find those sitcom house sets revolting but not on a critical level (I’ll laugh at a good Who’s The Boss with the rest of you) but on some sort of “my existence is now questioned” level.

It’s almost as if the sitcom house is showing us what normal living looks like. How we must behave, what we must have. I don’t believe this is the intent of these programs (although they are pretty much made to sell advertising) but these artificial families and their environments threaten me. It’s almost as if I’m told to write a book and the sitcom tells me what the final chapter must entail. It’s creepy.

Strangely, I don’t get this feeling with The Brady Bunch house. Maybe because it’s so big? Maybe because The Brady Bunch had such an expansive universe (The Grand Canyon, Hawaii, the driveway where they did that play, the phone booth George Glass called from)? Maybe it’s because I felt the Brady’s had serious flaws that were obvious and comforting. Cousin Oliver’s cold sore being a prime example.

Here’s a PDF of part of the “Dulce Papers” via UFOCaseBook.com. These papers were transcribed by John Lear from what Lear, the son of the inventor of the Lear Jet, claims were original texts and photographs:http://www.ufocasebook.com/pdf/dulcepapers.pdf

Here’s a fun clip from the History Channel’s UFO Hunters about the Dulce Papers. My favorite part is when the guy in the cap and glasses says he’s seen pictures and the other guy goes “really?” and the cap and glasses guy goes “well, drawings.”

David Icke (proceed with caution my friends): Icke, a former footballer and BBC sportscaster, kind of says it all, and by all, I mean he talks a lot, his traveling lecture packs venues and last 8 hours. His theories touch on the ruling class of the world being blood drinking lizard people. www.DavidIcke.com . I’ll say this about Icke, he comes across as a nice guy and I’ll listen to what he says about Nutra-Sweet and his concept of reality being a movie made by our consumerist society but I’m not so big on some of his other claims.

Here’s a great documentary on Icke by Jon Ronson, author of The Men Who Stare At Goats. Ronson explores the anti-semitic accusations about Icke’s “Lizard People” ideology. Myself, I think when Icke talks about Lizards, he’s talking about actual Lizard People. I don’t think Icke uses it as a racist metaphor.

Also check out Buck Rogers in the 25th Century for the Episode “Mark of the Saurian.” You can play a fun game by using your imagination to replace Buck Rogers with David Icke. If you have Netflix instant watch you can watch it right on your computer.

Here is my entry for the Mysterious Universe Fake Whistleblower Contest. Mysterious Universe is a top-notch podcast examining stories of the bizarre, unexplained, and paranormal hosted by Benjamin Grundy and Aaron Wright. They are currently holding a contest for the best “fake whistleblower,” i.e. someone who comes out of the shadows and divulges top secret information. The winner receives a salt lamp.

If I learned anything in 2009 it’s that pasta sauce bought in a store, in a crummy jar, is a hot load of crap. This just underlies my theory that everything in this world is a total scam.

This revelation began when my friend Anwar cooked an amazing pasta dish. I asked him what he used for sauce and he said that the sauce was just tomatoes in a food processor. And it was delicious. More delicious than any crap pasta sauce bought in a dirtbag grocery store. I’ll tell you that much right here and now.

I was reminded by Anwar’s sauce when my girlfriend Carrie suggested I put in some canned tomatoes with my rice and beans. This suggestion was also delicious.

So, the next time I went to the grocery store I walked right by the scamjob pasta sauce aisle and went straight towards the canned vegetables. I found myself a nice can of diced tomatoes. And it was about half as much as any bogus jar of rancid Ragu or cruddy Classico. I’m saving money and getting a tastier meal? Pinch me.

I’ve discovered that I can get a big can of diced tomatoes for about $1.29-1.79 if I look hard enough, and it’s well worth the effort, especially if you add in some chopped up sausage. It flavors the tomatoes right up. You can also add your own spices, like Mrs. Dash or Basil or whatever sets you off. Maybe add some oil. It’s delicious. And the best part? None of that horse flophigh fructose corn syrup will touch your lips. And the large cans of chopped tomatoes last a lot longer than those bum $3-$7 jars of the prepackaged junk that the food companies try to push on us.

A word to the wise, don’t get the cans of crushed tomatoes or the cans of whole tomatoes. I know the cans of whole tomatoes are cheaper and you’re thinking you can just dice them at home. It’s not the same. And the crushed tomatoes are like cans of red sludge. The diced toamtoes are beautiful and have a proper place atop of your favorite pasta.

I was listening to Coast to Coast AM from last night where Ian Punnett interviewed James Nestor on his book Get High Nowin which Nestor investigates methods of achieving altered states of consciousness besides using illegal drugs (mediation, breathing techniques, consuming certain foods, listening to specific sounds for long periods of time, etc.). During the interview, Ian Punnett mentioned having intensely weird dreams after eating pizza. Nestor claimed that hallucinogenic properties of cheese and basil in pizza might have something to do with Punnett’s experiences.

But nobody mentioned my dirty little secret: drinking broccoli broth.

I discovered once after boiling broccoli in a small pan that the left over broth was very green. I theorized that any of the nutrients that had left the broccolli might now be in the broth. So, I put the green water in a mug and drank it like tea. It didn’t taste bad. In fact, as I sat there, I felt my mood shift into a happy, giddy-like state as well as feeling relaxed. I was even listening to some Stevie Wonder at the time and entered the “I totally understand music” state. I don’t remember how long it lasted but I do remember that the strength of the broth was substantial enough for me to tell others about it. And when I did, I was met with disgust and shame. People told me I was drinking the equivalent of dishwater. I tried offering it to people after steaming some broccoli and was refused.

My crackpot theory: I think the process of boiling or steaming (or whatever I was doing to the broccoli) was concentrating the nutrients of the vegetable into the broth in such a way that when consumed gave off a high.

I’ve searched the internet looking for explanations of this “broccoli buzz” but have found nothing. If anyone else has had any such experiences with broccoli broth please share in the comments. I want to know that I’m not alone.

First, let me say that I don’t necessarily believe in this theory, I’m just throwing it out there. Second, I hope the people of Iran receive justice, a decent country, and an immediate end to the current violence .

O.K., so from what I’m hearing: Iran just had an election and Mahmoud “Make Fun of My Policies Not My Name” Ahmadinejad won by a wide margin against his opponent Mir Hossein Mousavi. The citizens of Iran are crying foul and protesting the results. They could teach us a couple things about not letting go of election fraud. Anyway, they’re in the streets and on internet, organizing dissent. The Iranian government is trying to quell the uprising with brute threats, goon squad violence, Gestapo-style arrests, and maintaining the legitimacy of the Bush-2000-esque results.

Here’s my crackpot theory: The United States rigged the election so that Ahmadinejad would win which would pave the way for a U.S. attack. Here’s the play by play: The U.S. via its spy network tips the election to Ahmadinejad’s favor. This unjust result causes mass protests and calls for international intervention. The Iranian government, believing they legitimately won and because they’re thugish despots (who never would have been in power if we didn’t install that stupid Shah), attacks the uprising. The Iranian people and the world are horrified. Cue the United States, Israel, and a coalition of democratic nations to save the day by attacking Iran and installing Mousavi. The invading force would have the people’s support (because the majority did vote for Mousavi) as well as international praise for aiding the freedom fighting Iranians. It’s just like Iraq, except this nation’s people made the first move and we’re seen as helping them, not forcing our ways on a sovereign nation. Not only are we now seen as the good guys again, but Mousavi is indebted to the U.S. for maintaining his authority. And… BOOM! We pulled another one on Iran.

Why would we do this? Hey, Iran’s been a problem for a long time. The U.S. even bares some responsibility for their current bogus regime. Plus, the Iranian government aids rebels in Iraq, has nukes, threatens our ally Israel, and is the world’s fifth largest producer of oil… Perhaps this was the thinking behind such a folly: The U.S. sensed that the current regime was losing favor amongst its citizens and saw the election as an opportunity to take advantage of this situation. The U.S. would then makes sure (Operation Ajax-style) the country falls into hands indebted to it. This theory fits into the broader theory (which I don’t think is very crackpot) that the whole reason we’re in the Middle East is to stabilize it and maintain a presence that facilitates the oil trade as well as global security. Once we get a U.S. friendly leader in Iran we can control their nukes, perhaps their oil, and not to mention snag some great real estate for military bases (we allegedly messed around with Australian politics to procure military bases in the past). Plus, we might even win over the hearts and minds of the Iranians and which could show the rest of the Middle East that we’re not so bad (despite the repetitive bad press we get for dropping bombs and torture).

Who would behind such a familiar ruse? President Obama? I don’t think so. The military? Why would they want another war? Who would benefit from a U.S. controlled Iran? People who could get their oil and/or people who build things or supply services to the military, perhaps the people who President Eisenhower warned us against, “the Military Industrial Complex” (video below).

I’m probably wrong. The current regime in Iran is fully capable of rigging an election. I just see a possible connection between the intense, justified, dissent in Iran and the forces that influence the foreign policy of the United States (i.e., the Military industrial Complex). Could the U.S. not rig the election and still go into Iran? Sure. I’m just sharing the theory that popped into my crackpot head. Is the U.S. definitely going to invade Iran? I hope not. For every military strike in the Middle East their seems to be no shortage of needless civillian (and military) deaths and life-wrecking injuries. Whatever the case, I hope, again, that the people in Iran get the decent leadership they deserve. I also hope the bombs and bullets stop flying everywhere in Middle East.

I feel like I’m going out on a limb with this one. But here’s my story. A couple years back I had this really intense dream. It started off as a normal night of sleep. I remember having a number of weird episodic dreams–one involved being in some kind of tourist space craft that the government had to destroy to eliminate an alien threat (they were nice enough to give a five minute warning before they zapped us), another dream had me watching the events of horrible crimes taking place on an old mansion located in a marsh, then finally the dream took me to this place where I was watching what looked like a self help group. This group was describing the afterlife and mentioning kooky things like “in the Kingdom a river flows East to a great Cathedral.” As the group was describing the afterlife I kind of got a peek of what they were talking about in my “dream scope.” I remember their description of Heaven looking like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Maybe for a comic book nerd like me, that would be Heaven. Then they started talking about Hell and I saw huge black hills that looked like they were made of coal–very intimidating. I think the group was talking about a castle or something to do with architecture.

Then a voice entered the dream, almost like a third party who was eavesdropping and wanted to offer its two cents, and it said “THERE ARE NO STRUCTURES IN HELL.”

Then the reality of the dream dissolved and I was in what I can only describe as a “void.” I remember feeling a raw, dreadful emotion in this space. Something almost new. I wasn’t scared or sad, I was something beyond that because I felt this void was the absence of everything. Everything was gone. I remember thinking that even sadness was gone because it had some tinge of happiness or joy attached to it. I also remember comparing the feeling to being lost when you’re a child, like when you go to a store or mall and lose track of your parents. The only thing present in this place was basically me and other displaced souls and that was it. The feeling of “dread” got more intense until I woke up.

I flipped out. I actually thought I had been somewhere else. I wanted to tell everyone I knew what I experienced, that there was a Hell, that I had been there, and that it was “nothing.” I found a pocket Gideon Bible that someone had handed to me on the street a while back. I took it with me to work and threw it in my desk drawer, for protection.

At work, I scoured the web looking for tales similar to mine and found a site on near death experiences that talked about folks who didn’t “see the light” and experienced “voids.” I wrote the site a frantic email, wanting some kind of validation. The slightly overweight moustached fellow who was pictured as the creator of the site never wrote me back.

The intense feeling of “I went to Hell!” lasted a day and the impact of what I went through might have stayed with me a couple weeks. I remember trying to get people’s reactions to this tale and people not really having anything to say. I think what I wanted to hear wasn’t so much a “I believe you” as a “why the hell not.” I got some supportive feedback, but I somehow felt the urge to dispense my vision like an Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah Two. I eventually settled down. Even if no one believed me, I thought I was the fish who had a glimpse of what was beyond the fishbowl.

Up until then, I had a vague belief in the afterlife, one that basically just included a Heaven where God’s love comforts all. After this dream, I altered my map of the next world. My perception of the afterlife changed to include many realms and possibly bad ones. And divine judgement of “sins” had nothing to do with where you wind up first, just like when you’re born into this world. Furthermore, I began to think that being in this “void” might be a good experience, a way to evaluate on oneself and one’s life with virtually no distractions–a way to realize hidden values in one’s life as well as mistakes. I began thinking that my (or the entity in my dream) calling the void “Hell” was just me using the closest label I had for this place. In the end I saw this dream (or glimpse of the afterlife) as a positive experience reassuring me that we survive and still have enough of our identity after death to be freaked out.

Anyway, that was my dream. Was it a dream? Was it a mystical experience? Was it the result of eating too many slices of pepperoni before I go to bed? Who knows. Who cares. For what its worth it did change how I viewed things.

But here’s my crackpot theory: I believe there’s a psychedelic that’s produced in the human body, known as DMT, and this chemical can be released when we sleep, causing intense dreams and feelings of entering another world. And I think “feelings” might be a little conservative, I theorize that this chemical might even act as an aid in tuning the radio receiver that is our brain into receiving information from other realms in the universe.

I kind of just made a leap from A to C with this one. But I didn’t really come up with this theory on my own. I read it in Rick Strassman’s DMT: The Spirit Molecule. It”s a real interesting read. Dr. Strassman gained permission from the U.S. to study the psychedelic DMT’s effects on human subjects (it’s an illegal substance, even though it’s found in your body as well as many plants and organisms). I’m remembering the book from a couple years ago, so there might be a couple holes in my recounting it: Basically, Strassman theorized that DMT is produced in the brain and is released occasionally, for example during moments of intense meditation, “alien abductions,” and physical death (or near death experiences). Strassman went on to theorize, and correct me if I’m misrepresenting the book, that DMT might not just create a “movie in the brain” but might also make the mind enter other realms while the drug is active in the brain. Evidence for this theory were that his subjects experiencing similar situations and meeting similar beings. If DMT allows the mind to enter other levels of consciousness and its released in the brain during sleep, it might also account for vivid dreams, seeing future events and other dream phenomena. Hey, it could happen.

I know it sounds pretty crackpot, but I like thinking of the brain as a radio that can tune into other signals. It’s not for everyone, but if you disagree or have similar stories, drop a comment below.

O.K., gang, here’s what I got. Do you read the ingredients when you’re grocery shopping? I do. And I’ve noticed that everything contains processed sugar, or more frequently high fructose corn syrup. That’s as bogus as bogus gets. We don’t need that crap in everything. I have a theory. Now maybe this is orchestrated by food companies to have people get addicted to sugar foods and keep buying sugary products or maybe food companies are answering our cheap decadent demands or possibly “those in power” want us to consume mass amounts of sugar. No matter the cause, I think it has a disastrous effect: I think it makes us lazy, compliant, and less likely to counter the status quo. I think sugar makes us sheep, easy to herd and easy to fatten. My apologies to sheep, I think they’re beautiful animals, but you get the picture.

Here’s the deal. My parents were friends with missionaries in Zimbabwe, you know that horrible dictator Mugabe’s country. Apparently, these missionary friends would get upset whenever they passed by a “happy hour” back in the United States. They weren’t upset for the reasons you think: “the sin of drinking,” etc. They were upset because apparently in Zimbabwe at the end of the day after everyone was leaving their low paying crap jobs, the government would SUBSIDIZE happy hours all over the country so that the people could have a little beer, get a little happy, then go to sleep–never having enough time to think, plan, or organize about getting rid of their crappy dictator government. It’s pretty genius–and makes me think about people who hate their jobs for 8 hours a day then regularly flock to the nearest happy hour. When do they have time to plan to make things better?

But back to sugar. It’s in everything. It’s hard to avoid. What happens when you eat a lot of sugar? You enjoy it, maybe get a little hyper, then crash, and possibly later on in life suffer from dietary induced health problems. I think that this overflow of processed sugar and high fructose corn syrup is making us a little complacent and physically lazy, chipping away at our desire to make an effort to change things–kind of like the state sponsored beer in Zimbabwe. Look at us, we thrive on convenience. We only get upset when things are taken away from us. Were we always like that? I think our sugar intake has something to do with this mindset. I don’t have any hard science to back up my theory and I’m not convinced it’s intentional but I think it’s happening. Sugar and high fructose corn syrup, I theorize, are mind control drugs in the sense that they make us complacent and reluctant to get off the couch. Seriously, how many people have a soda with every meal? It’s insane how much sugar we pump into our system. We all remember eating too much candy when we were little and the moods it induced. There has to be some mass psychological effect of all this sugar.

I must disclose that I ate more than a few chocolate chunk cookies before writing this crackpot theory.

I’ve always found the tale of John Titor fun to talk about at parties. If you’re not familiar with “the man who’s past is our future,” basically in 2000 someone posted on an internet forum that they were a time traveller from the year 2036. This person called him or herself, John Titor, and answered people’s questions for a little while then disappeared. John Titor painted a future where a huge war had wiped out a lot of folks and structures. Time travel was made possible by manipulating small black holes. In general, the tone of Titor’s writing seems a little rough. Such as one poster asked TItor when cops would stop busting people for pot and Titor responded “Probably when they stop answering your 911 calls.” I read another posting where he was talking about half the world perishing in his time’s world war and that it made the world a better place.

Even if it’s baloney, it’s tasty baloney and my small summary doesn’t do justice to the breadth of topics covered in Titor’s (often angry) web discussions. You should really at least check out the Wikipedia page for a good read. Some people think that Titor was real, some think he was a hoax, some think he was a psychic (or group of psychics) trying to warn us of a future that only he or she or they could see. All possible stories are better than anything currently in the cinemas or on TV (except for Up).

But here’s my theory: I think John Titor was the late great science fiction novelist Michael Crichton. I rest my thesis on a couple points. First, the method of time travel Titor explains is not really time traveling but traveling to different parallel universes that are very similar to one’s own (I can’t find the specific text, but you if you dig around on abovetopsecret.com you should find lots on this and more). This “crossing into parallel universes” method of time travel sounds like the exact same method Michael Crichton employs in his sci-fi thriller Timeline, a great summer read. Timeline was published in 1999. John Titor began posting in 2000. Secondly, John Titor wrote about Global Warming not being the threat that we believe it to be. This falls in line with Mr. Crichton’s own opinion, check out this speech he gave in 2005. And on top of those two points, John Titor is a great story packed with cool science tidbits for which Mr. Crichton was known to deliver.

Now, there are a few things that don’t exactly match up with my theory, such as why there would be a legitimate entertainment lawyer, Larry Haber based in Florida, attached to represent the current “Titor” story as well as the “Titor family.” And there’s also the fact that the story continues past Mr. Crichton’s passing. But I’m sticking to my crackpot theory.

If you want to read what’s current with Titor fans, there’s a website, JohnTitor.com which tries to follow Titor’s predictions and has some cool articles about the time travel method Titor described manifesting itself in current science (although to me it sounds like Crichton was well aware of it before 1999), and other scientific predictions such as viruses being used to fight cancer. Since a lot of Titor’s discussions portray a future rocked by civil war, some of his predictions and the articles on the site sound like quasi-paranoid-the-government-is-against-you-New-World-Order-conspiracy lore (doesn’t mean any of it’s invalid). In general, quite a few of the articles which claim to show evidence of Titor’s predictions do seem like a stretch to this crackpot, but the info on time traveling and cancer fighting viruses is pretty cool.

That’s my two cents. If you have any other theories or evidence, post it below.